


That's What Friends Are For

by TheDarkFlygon



Series: Fever February [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Awkward Crush, Blushing, College, Fever, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Male Friendship, Overworking, Platonic Relationships, Sickfic, Teasing, nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 09:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13586919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon
Summary: [FEVER FEBRUARY - DAY 2: OVERWORK]Three friends, only one mission: convince Florian to go the fuck to sleep.It takes conviction, compromising text messages and some girl to get him to marry his bed once and for all.Nerds.





	That's What Friends Are For

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fever February!  
> https://mugenthesickfic.tumblr.com/post/170469673461/introducing-fever-february
> 
> Florian is finally getting the fluff.  
> I guess I wrote fluff two times in a row because Sollicitude is Florian and François angst central lately. They deserve some floof.  
> ESPECIALLY SINCE I HAVE ANGST IDEAS FOR LATER DAYS

“For the thousandth time already: I’m okay!” Florian yells in the general direction behind him as he gets his head out of his novel.

“Yeah, sure. Still as likely as Bouquinerie going missing for a single day,” Christian replies from behind his desk chair, his tone flatter than the medieval representation of planet Earth.

“You cannot have possibly worked so much lately and be entirely okay. This is not humanly possible, and you know it, Florian,” Eudes, who is visiting, adds.

“Oh my God, would you stop bothering me already? I have a paper to finish for tomorrow, and currently you’re making it impossible to do!”

 

The two men get farther from their friend, who breathes out. Their heads get close to the other, as if they were imitating TV reality starlets portraying high school girls.

“There’s no way we’re getting him out of there,” whispers Christian. Not even the fever stops him.”

“Wait,” Eudes almost speaks too loudly, “he is running a fever?! How do you even know that?!”

“He was so focused on his thing,” the History major explains, “I managed to put my hand on his forehead. He’s getting himself ill over some kind of essay… thing. I never really understood literature specialists but geez, that’s overdoing it.”

“A fever, you say…” the redhead mutters to himself, a sly smile on his face.

 

Christian doesn’t really get what makes him so happy, but he’s damn curious to know what.

“Yeah, a fever. A probably not-so-low one of that because, duh, it’s Florian. The guy gets sick as soon as he’s tired, even if it’s just a stuffed nose.”

“Thank you so much for the information, Chris. I know exactly what to do now.”

His smirk turns into a mischievous grin. He has the best idea he’s gotten in the entire year, and he’s certain it’s going to work perfectly.

 

“Florian?” Eudes yells suddenly in the room.

He gets an angered “What?!” in response.

“You’re going to piss him off,” Christian murmurs to him, “you’re not making it any better. He’s already very snappy when he’s getting told he’s sick.”

“Do you know who will come to get your soft behind to stop overworking yourself if you do not stop?”

“Yeah, Henri,” Florian replies. “Because why not invite all our goddamn room from Lakanal, while you’re at it. Why are you two still around anyway?”

“Henri? He is busy. I know someone in your course who is not, however…”

 

Florian’s head slowly turns towards his friends’, and he’s finally out of his book, which he put on the desk. It finally dawns on Christian, and they both say the same name at the same time.

“Annabelle.”

Eudes’s grin turns into an exploding laugh. He likes to mess around with Florian, that much has been established since the beginning of last year and meeting with both him and her, but this time his little devil jokes may serve a use.

 

“That’s weird, Flo. I thought you were alright, but you seem pained at the idea of seeing Annabelle,” Christian teases, getting way too much enjoyment out of bothering his friend.

“I-I have an incoming deadline…!” he defends himself. “I don’t have time to spend with her…! I…”

“Be honest here. You’re feverish and you don’t want her to worry.”

“I don’t have a fever! How would you know that anyway?! I don’t remember you chasing after me with a thermometer.”

“Turns out you’re completely vulnerable to touch when you’re deep into your stuff, friend.”

 

The literature major’s eyes grow wide as his face distorts. Some cold sweat mixes with the hot one he already has going on.

“I… When… When did you do that…?” is all he replies, so taken aback he can barely speak.

“Earlier in the afternoon. You’re a real human heater when you’re feverish.”

“You couldn’t possibly know I was ill, if I’m even ill in the first place,” (Eudes sighs: that guy’s really stubborn), “since I don’t even have class today.”

“You sent Henri and me a message at three in the morning signed François, and somehow it was meant for a Roxanne, whoever that is. I didn’t know you once called yourself François until this morning.”

“Oh, right, I once thought of… Wait, what was in the message?!”

“Stuff about your paper, or something, your verbs weren’t making sense. Then you mentioned ‘going on T’ and surgery. Let me guess, she’s…”

“Not in front of people who don’t know that!” Florian snaps, almost out of breath.

 

His face is both flushed and red from his obvious embarrassment. Eudes is both dying of laughter and barely understanding what all that mess was.

“You should go to bed, at least until that fever you-totally-don’t-have-right goes down. I’m sure you can’t even read what’s written properly and that you forgot you finished it like… two days ago.”

Florian blinks furiously, quiet, and then looks down at his paper.

“You’re right… I’ve already finished it…” he whispers to himself. “What was I even doing already?”

“Who knows,” Christian replies. “But now you can go to bed and sleep until you have to give it back to whoever charged you with writing it.”

“Right…”

 

He slumps inside his chair, no matter how basic and uncomfortable it actually is. His weak giggle is half-rewarding, half-paining. It wasn’t easy to make him come clean about his fever: it’ll be harder to convince him it’s okay to rest when there’s an impending deadline because perfectionism isn’t the key to everything.

“It means you can go to bed before you pass out cold on your chair,” Christian says.

“You’re still going to call Annabelle if I do…?” is all he asks.

Eudes sighs, “Is this all you think of when you overworked yourself to a fever? I still do not get why she chose you over all the other nice boys from her class. I did not know she liked her men vulnerable.”

Florian’s blush is now radiating over his flush, hiding the lower half of his face behind his hands. If he was Henri, Christian would have found this cute.

“Do not tell me you would not want her to take care of your fever. You are drooling over the idea inside.”

His blushing is reaching dangerously bright territories.

“T-that’s false!!”

 

Christian smirks and whispers to his friend, “His native accent is showing, that means he’s being embarrassed. He’s totally drooling the idea of seeing her take care of him because he’s easily lonely when he’s sick.”

“He is? I would have never told.”

“Flo’s actually a teddy bear, not a stone giant. He needs company when he’s ill.”

“This is… actually a bit sad. We seem to be bothering him, however, are you sure he does not want to be alone?”

“He’s tricking himself into thinking he’s good enough not to need company. Call her.”

 

Christian walks up to his other friend and gives him his hand.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed. You have a fever to sleep off.”

A quick look behind him confirms that Eudes has left. Florian grabs the hand and pulls off from his chair, gets unbalanced for a bit, and catches himself before Christian has to.

“You’re going straight to bed.”

“You’ve only said so thirty times today,” Florian snickers before almost collapsing on his friend.

“If you had listened to the first one, I wouldn’t have needed the twenty-nine others, you know.”

 

A few minutes later, he’s back into his pyjamas and inside his bed. Now he gets to notice the fever’s strength, with all the chills it can get out of him. It’s harder than it looks to be both hot and cold at the same time, not so surprisingly. Time flies weirdly, and he’s unable to either look at his phone, his watch or the clock in his room. That place has an awfully placed bed.

He can however find comfort in a cup of tea served by…Goddammit Eudes.

 

“Hello… He still called you, huh…” he tells his not-so-surprise guest as a hand lands on his forehead and someone sits next to him on his bed.

“Eudes told me you were not doing so well… It looks like he was right, you seem to need some care.”

“It’s just a tiny fever from pushing myself too much… Nothing major, I promise…”

“Hush now,” she puts a finger on his mouth as an emphasis. “Everyone here agrees you need your rest. You have to at least lay back in order to do that.”

“Mm-hmm,” he mutters, leaning against the hand on his cheek. He doesn’t want her to leave his side, ever. He’s sure she has a ton of other things to do aside from taking care of his overworked face: she has the same essay to give back as him, friends to see, books to read, quotes to learn by heart… But he can’t tell her to remember those because she told him to be quiet, so he stays quiet.

Annabelle opens a book, holding it in her left hand as her right one is still stroking where he hasn’t shaved for a few days now (he does like finally having facial hair, though). It doesn’t look like she’s leaving for a while, so he just fully leans under her touch. That’s one blessing he doesn’t want to miss any piece of.

 

An hour later, Eudes realizes he forgot his phone on Florian’s kitchen counter (if a kitchen that guy even has, buried under all the other crap on his furniture). When he goes to get it, he notices a peculiar scene that he finds absolutely disgusting: the guy sleeping in his bed, with his sister having fallen so while doing whatever couples do.

“Nerds.”

**Author's Note:**

> Also I slipped one or two very not stealthy hints as to something I revealed like last month so have fun with that


End file.
